POV; The Heart of the Matter

Monday night at 10 on WETA. What's so bad about feeling good just as the guru of greatness? I was having the best day of my life until you maybe listen to that tape. Well, you know what I do when I'm really depressed? Yes, and I think it's disgusting. Next, on the Stephen Banks show, Monday night at 10.30 on WETA. Travel with the crew of the driftwood to visit the people and places they discovered on the waterways. In our next episode, you'll go to a town where bedtime takes on a whole new meaning. You'll meet a hundred-year-old woman who strikes fear into the hearts of developers. And the doctor, whose patients are some of nature's most gentle creatures. I'm Jason Robards. Welcome aboard. Tuesday night at 8 on WETA. An explosion in space puts the lives of three men on the line. Can the ship bring them home or will they be lost in space forever? The world watches and waits as Apollo 13 goes to the edge and back.

Wednesday night at 9 on WETA. WETA TV 26, Washington. The following program contains language that is mature in nature. Viewer discretion is advised. POV, independent points of view from America's independent filmmakers. Next, on POV. Women to get aid and women die for me. Their battles inspire rage. It doesn't matter how you got it. Nobody deserves to have this virus.

Their courage inspires hope. Now one voice of many and all of those voices together, we're going to make a change. When the heart of the matter looks at women and sexuality in the age of eight. We're going to move through this silence about sexuality and about responsibility. Major funding for POV has been provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to increase public awareness of independent film and video. The National Endowment for the Arts. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And by annual financial support from viewers like you. Ginny Rediker, producer. It's like you want to be sexually attractive. But if you're too sexually attractive, you know, then you're asking for it. So it's kind of this constant going back and forth trying to figure out where you're supposed to be in this. And to say, well, I'm going to own my sexuality. I'm going to feel good about who I am. I'm going to take responsibility for my sexuality.

I'm going to feel okay about being desirable. I'm going to feel okay about having desire. And I'm going to figure out what I want to do about that. And I'd like to, incidentally, feel safe within that construction. I think that's very, very difficult territory to claim. HIV never propelled this film. The women in it propelled this film. HIV was a perspective because it was something that had happened to them. They were always at risk if HIV hadn't happened. They were still struggling with exactly the same issues that they named in this film. That's why the film, I think, works because it's not a film about HIV. It's a film about women. I think a lot of women are still in denial about that it can happen to them or that this can't happen to me. And that's not so. Across the board, you can see that, yes, the numbers are rising around women, especially women of color. I guess I thought that I only had to worry about it with people I didn't know.

But as long as I knew someone, then I had nothing to worry about. And I don't know how I define that. It could be knowing him for a week, you know. Still, the message is still the same, that it's very difficult for lesbians to affect each other. At least that's what we're saying now. That's, we've moved along to be able to say that it's difficult. Okay, there was a time when it was said women cannot. Lesbians can't affect other lesbians. I've always considered myself to have a small army of angels that take care of me. You know what, with my motorcycle riding and hang gliding and all that stuff. And that's why when I finally got caught with this one, I was like, I don't know, I never get caught, you know what's going on. I want you to just kind of in your mind get a sense of where you were 15 years ago, what were you doing, who were you with, and who were your friends.

The questions I'm going to ask you are going to be questions about from 15 years ago till now. Question number one. Have you used drugs or alcohol as an addiction, as a recreation, or to the point of impaired judgment that you don't remember exactly what you did or exactly who you went home with any time even once in the last 15 years? Question number two. Have you had unprotected sex with a man or woman in the last 15 years? Now by unprotected, I mean that you didn't use a latex condom or a dental exam. By sex, I mean oral sex, vaginal intercourse or anal intercourse, and that could be by consent. It could be by force or coercion if you were raped.

Sex for money or drugs or food or clothing or shelter. Sex for the purpose of getting pregnant. Because you have to have unprotected sex in order to get pregnant or artificial insemination. Third question. Have you had unprotected sex with a man or with the woman who was a needle drug user or bisexual any time in the last 15 years? And finally, have you had any blood exposure, needle stick injuries, or received a transfusion between 75 and 85? If you answered yes to any of those questions, I would like you to sit down now. We are in a race between education and catastrophe. We are in a race between education and catastrophe.

Women are in denial because they don't have the basic facts. They have been lied to. The truth has been withheld. They don't have true pictures. That's the biggest part of what. Everything that I thought wasn't what I thought it was when I got into it because somebody didn't give me all the facts. Somebody didn't sit down and just simply tell me the truth. And I think that's a part of the denial they have not been told the truth. Our notions of gender roles present women with real contradictions between what we teach women all their lives to do and think

and what we're now asking them to do, which is to be assertive and look honestly at their behavior and communicate it openly with their partner. Not only that, but take responsibility for the major prevention effort when women have never been given that kind of power, especially with respect to their sexuality. I really loved my husband. And I felt that I had to prove that to him. So whatever he felt, he needed, which probably wasn't really necessary and had nothing to do with me convincing him that I loved him, to stroke his ego, I did because I did not realize the difference that I do now that it didn't take all of that to let him know that I loved him. But I felt like I had to reassure him because he was so insecure and when he came from home from the hospital and we knew that he had AIDS, he wouldn't use a condom.

He wouldn't use a condom. His, he was hurting, he was suffering, my man was wounded, and all I could think about was him. I couldn't think about, I mean, they're in the back of my mind saying, no, we probably should use a condom here because it probably is some risk of being, what if I wasn't, at the time I didn't know that I had the virus. But I was by me submitting to him like that. I was more or less saying, okay, whatever comes, I'm going to take it because this is his wife and I'm supposed to make him feel better. So the irresponsible things that he would have me do, I did. Here's the way it works. The husband is to be under the control of Jesus. Jesus is to be the head of the husband and the husband is to submit to Jesus Christ and to do what he says. In turn, the wife is, and I know a lot of women don't like this,

but this is what he says is to submit to the husband because the husband in turn is submitting to Jesus. And she makes the husband, the head of the household, he is the high priest receiving what comes from the Lord. When I found out I was HIV positive, I couldn't talk to my husband about it too much because he was dealing with his own anger and how I was going to accept being, you know, that he gave me this. And I was so busy trying to make sure that he knew that I didn't blame him and that I didn't, that I really couldn't express all of what I was feeling to him. So I went in the bathroom. When I came home, I remember I went in the bathroom and I got on my knees and I just cried and I asked God, I said, I can't ask you to take this away because you allowed this to happen to me. But if you will, if you will, please let this, you know, I felt like Jesus Christ at the cross

let this cup pass if it's your will. Every cross, maybe I believe in love, sweet love, every corner of your name. I feel the shame I'm in love, sweet love. Don't you love me no more, wait, and I'll always be true. Sweet love. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I did not know how to ask my family to help me. I just told them, this is what's happening and I need your love. This way, here. I didn't realize that that meant that they would be coming over doing laundry, bringing bags of groceries. just come and hugged me sometimes. And because of the lack of support

that I was getting from the agencies that were set up to hopefully believe some of the burden, the pressures were enormous. I tell everything, that's what she said. I tell everything. We do have a very loving family. Very loving family. I think my mom, because she's been more than an aspiration for us. She is a beautiful lady. Zannis has made me be more beautiful than I might that would have been to see her go through what she did with her husband. You know, how could you not help? But see what a person she was. You had to stick with her. I had to keep myself together in order to keep everything going. And that was so hard. That was so hard. I am in laws. They had never even stopped the green for my husband. They were so busy trying to make sure people didn't know

what he had. And I saw the hurt he was going through, because he never thought his family would disappoint him. They couldn't even come to say goodbye to him, because he would not have green to leave me and going quietly and dying at a hospital or nursing home. And so they didn't. They just cut him off. She could have walked away from Jimmy when he got sick and said, hey, I got this much in my life left, and I'm not going to take care of you. But she didn't. She stuck through to thinking then. That's the kind of woman I want. She's mad, Zannis. And she's not going to die. She's going to leave, because we're going to help her live. I don't want to hear that women are HIV positive, because they didn't know. You know, this victim role, I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop being victims to everything. I wanted us to not be stupid.

I wanted to, we have an intelligent people. We can manage a whole lot of people's lives. I wanted to still know how to manage our own. A lot of the stuff that was written didn't talk about women like me. They weren't talking about women who had been addicted. Are they weren't saying it in a way where I understood it? So I wasn't interested in reading it, but I believed with the women what we told each other. And there was some very wild rumors. All I really can remember from that time was that I really went into shock. And I guess I started crying. Because here I was in a dorm, one of these hall phones. And my roommate came down the hall because she heard me crying. And I got off the phone, and she reached out to hug me, not really knowing what was going on. And I pushed her away, and I said, don't touch me. And I don't even think I thought about it before I did it. But I know that immediately I felt the sense of, oh my god,

I'm going to infect everything I touch. I have to be so careful. And also a feeling of shame that somehow I deserve this, that somehow I was wrong. I had done something wrong to deserve this. You had a dirty woman. No sir, a great bag home. She wasn't any past two. Have you known her long? I met her the day I got home, sir. On the street or in a bar. I don't mess around with streetwalks. I met her in the drugstore. Was she a picker? No sir, I just met her, that's all. And you had her that night. No sir, the next night. And you didn't use her rub? No sir. She looked clean, sir. She looked clean all over. Not on the inside, come over. Where you touched her, she was filthy and diseased.

We come to the same thing with HIV. Society sees her as the bad one. The one has caused all of the problems. The Jezebel, the terrible woman. They go all the way back and said, you know, Eve started to mess off. If she wouldn't have messed up, everything would have been all right. If a young girl today chooses to be sexually active, and chooses to use contraception, then she's immediately tagged as being promiscuous, that she knows about it, that she's prepared for it, that there's not this conquering event. And versus women, young women who are responsible in choose, I mean, they're the promiscuous ones. The ones who don't get padded on the back and the myth is continued, poor Susie. Susie didn't know any better.

And it begins immediately, the cycle of having not chosen to become sexually involved, having not taken responsibility, having not gotten that information, but having had things happen. Out, out, out. I don't like the good girl bad girls sin for me anymore. I am me, and whatever is in my life, and however I got there, God understands that he accepts me unconditionally, and I don't feel that it's any rooting bad in me. I think that I am just am. I just am. I'm just Janice. No, you've got to find the panic. Come over here. I think unless people hear that the stigma's not OK, they don't know. They walk around sleep forever. I'm going to read, come on. You still here. Buddy, don't go away, man. Oh, Lord James. My mom still believes that AIDS is a punishment from God, and she believes that God is punishing me personally. She says that what I'm doing is the devil's work,

and that the people who mean the most to me are our sinners and are going to hell. Basically gay people are all going to hell, but she also believes that her own daughter is going to hell. He was so ashamed of it, he wouldn't let us tell anybody, which made it really hard. And I practically finally had to force him to go out and get his test results. And then he never came home. He showed up about four o'clock in the morning, really high and fucked up, and announced that he was leaving me, that he wasn't sure he'd ever really love me. Meanwhile, we just put a house together two weeks before this. The Bible says, no fornicator shall enter the kingdom of heaven. I want to say that again, no fornicator shall enter the kingdom of heaven. And the apostle Paul then says, but such were some of ye, but you have been washed, you've been sanctified by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. No fornicator shall enter the kingdom of heaven.

Sex outside of marriage is fornication. It is a sin, it is a sin against your own body, and no fornicator shall enter the kingdom of heaven. I don't set the rules, I just announced them. It's easy for us, as I like to put it, it's pretty good who are not infected. To stop quoting about our morals and our standards. It's easy because then we don't have to look at ourselves. And what we have done with persons who are infected is we have blamed them because they have been morally bad. They've done the wrong thing. And if they would have done the right thing, they would not have been infected. And what we're trying to get the church to do is break through them and say, it doesn't matter what you've done. We are here to minister to you. The church is so important in our community. Everything happens there.

We've got to do something to save our people. We've got to do something to save our women, whether they block our way. But we've got to wake our community up, and our penises are going to have to address what's going on in our churches. You can't go to a church, and then go to churches and say, we don't want to teach your people my needs. Well, we don't have that, and we teach abstinence. How old that girl over there is pregnant? He's 15. You think that happened by immaculate conception? She's not practicing abstinence. So the church is going to have to wake up and call on it what it is. And you can't fight something that you don't mean. Now, I know people don't die of AIDS. They die of the opportunistic infections. But for all practical purposes, we need to say in our church that he died, she died of AIDS. To some communities, that wouldn't mean much.

But to us, it needs to be said. Because we don't use that word. We want to avoid it, and maybe the disease will go away. I got to take this time to shake somebody else's coatel, hey, look, check this out, look at me. Look at what happened to me. I didn't know, because there was nobody there for me to tell me what I needed to do. In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus we have a letter here. In the name of Jesus, we have a letter here. and I will have to replace all of you. And I'll live for you, and I'll stay with you forever.

I'll be with you, I'll follow you every day. I'm very grateful for what Audrey, this pastor, these ladies, I don't see this kind of action up north. I don't see people really stopping and saying, wait a minute, we're doing something wrong. Let's rethink this thing because the church, of course, can do nothing wrong. I came to the church, but because I was 13 and I had a baby, I was labeled a bad girl. They did not know that I had gotten that baby as a result of the dysfunction within my family, that I had been abused, that I came to them to embrace me,

and they scolded me and threw me away. I also, because from out of my own experience, and I'm just talking about the abuse, but struggling as a black woman, struggling with the abuse from men, the negative connotation that society have of us, that negative message that we're nothing, that we're never going to be nothing, and I can relate to the hurt that the other people around the church, the poor people around the church were going through. I know that after my husband died, the one thing that I had to do was go back to the church. I had to some kind of way remind people of when, before they got so proud, what it was like. I have a little song here that sort of sums up what I'm trying to say.

We need to be more than just friends, because sometimes special friends don't understand. Sometimes our parents don't understand. And if you haven't walked a mile in my shoe, don't judge me, don't judge me. Thank you. This needs to be words for some. I'm so sorry we failed you. You represent the thousands that we have failed.

I don't offer any excuses, but I thank God that he sent you to us. So that you could remind us of what he's called his church to be about. And if he had to use HIV, the virus that kills, I'm going to quote some scripture to your sister. He said, for we know, that all things work together for good, to them that love the Lord, to call the court into a spur. And out of this comes good, because then all the Christ in her, that Christ in me is the hope of glory.

And he's going to take all this stuff and he's going to bring good love. It's interesting that people say, don't educate kids because they're going to go out and have sex. I never got any sex education at all. I'm going to go to Catholic schools and what my mother told me was, you know what not to do, so don't do it. She wouldn't even say the word. And I experimented. But maybe if I had read more, if somebody had said it's okay, it's okay to learn about this and to explore it without actually doing it, then I might have waited. I might have protected myself. I don't know. And the last 12 months, there has been a 114% increase of infection among children under 13, cases among adolescents dealt. The rate of infection is increasing more rapidly, and girls than boys, the same age. Mommy is still trying to think

and it won't happen to my daughter, because I told her I don't have sex and she said, okay. And so what mommy has to realize is that that daughter isn't a lot of pressure out there. And she's going to do things that her friends would approve of. And so mommy's going to have to help her through that. And education, education, education, and education. I can't say it enough. Everybody ought to become educators to teach everybody else about this disease. The answer right now is like, don't have sex. You know? Wow. What does it do? I mean, it's like cutting off and cutting out of our soul is to cut out our sensuality and our sexuality for fear. And yet there's an issue around being responsible in knowing that and communicating and not being victims. So it's about a whole new conversation that has to take place. And they call it safe sex. The only safe sex is biblical sex inside the marriage bond.

And for Planned Parenthood to think that by having sex clinics in schools and passing out birth control pills and condoms, they're going to curb teenage pregnancy. It's as ridiculous as passing out cookbooks at a fat farm. You've got to be an idiot to believe that kind of stuff. And yet we fund that with our dollars, with our monies. When I was growing up, we didn't have this education. We had lots of pregnancies. But we didn't have AIDS. You know? And if there is a light in this tunnel, then it's about us using this disease and what it's doing to life to ensure that our young people are going to be educated and that we're going to move through this silence about sexuality and about responsibility. And be real proud of being women and about being strong. It's too much unnecessary suffering.

It does not even have to be. And it needs to stop. The cycle needs to stop. And I'm just one voice of many. I know it's other women out there. It's other people out there trying to change things. And I'm one voice of many. And all of those voices together, we're going to make a change. It's going to happen. I listen to the feminist or these radical gals most of them are failures. They've blown it. Someone have been married, they've married some Casper Milk Toast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. Most of these women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of these women, these feminists just need a man to tell him what time of day it is. That's all they need.

Historically, we haven't been researched or looked at or respected or identified. You know, never mind, heard from. And it's absolutely important that this start happening. When I came out in 88, I wrote my first article for Body Positive. From the magazine. And my family, I called my family to let them know they started freaking out. There was my story about my drug use. And there was my story about prostitution. And there was my story about all this stuff. And my mother was enraged. Because with the last name like von Guggenberg,

it was going to come back to them in a shame. And what people are going to think. You know, you have a last name that is not very common. People were going to say, oh my god, is this person related to you? Is this your sister or whoever? And I said, Ma, you're not the only one that's been touched by this. I mean, there were very few families that have never been ravaged by this. And she says, I don't think so. And I started naming people close to us that have either died or that are sick. It's affecting us in such great numbers. I mean, that women do get AIDS. Women do get AIDS. And women die from AIDS. And I said, okay, so what do you think about that? And she changed the subject. I believe Genesis has always been active in the world in one way, shape form with that. And I think she has made a difference to me. I really do. And not only people that we don't know, women in the family, she's made a lot of difference in the women in the family.

This lady has been through everything with me and she is still hanging in here. Sometimes I know her. She's trying to tell me to give rest. And I'm thinking of all the 20,000 things I like to be doing. I love her. She has not only to me, but to all of my sisters and brothers, which I hope will stand now and come forward. All of us. She's going through with all of her to 11 children now, because one is dead. And she's just as supportive for all of us. So she's been a great mom and we want to take this opportunity to tell her we love her. This is what we learned to do with this hug and kiss. Instead of fussing and fighting with this hug and kiss all the time. I'm so happy you're here because I don't think Daddy slept this week at all.

Thinking you know you wouldn't show. That's right. So, I mean, she might be sweet and all that. But I have to wrestle for some time. I'm going to tell you. Try to make a good rest. You know, take care of yourself. Everything's going to be fine. Y'all just pray for us. And there we go. You want to dedicate this song to Daniels from all of her sisters and brothers. Raise it down. Raise it down. All right. When you're down and trouble. You need. You need some love and care. I have not been really sick yet. So I'm sure that'll be another part of the process when I get sick.

But my hope is I do have a life and that I have just as much right to live it and include in my life now the happiness that I never had. I'm my name. And you know wherever I am. My hope is that I know that I'm going to be happy because I'm going to make myself happy. My hope is that my life is going to be complete because I'm not going to sit around and wait for people to put the things in my life that I need to make it complete. I'm going to do what I need to make my own self-complete. I'm going to look at the trees. I'm going to take time to make myself beautiful. I'm going to have sex when I want to have sex. I'm going to have Pete friends that I can laugh with. You know everything that's not about that in my life. I'm getting it out of my life. You got a friend. Oh darling. You got a friend. Any good to know that you got a friend.

I love you. After Ted died I remember going through a long grieving process and I have to say a big part of that grieving process was grieving for my own sexuality because as soon as Ted died I thought, oh my god, I'm 20 years old and I'll never have sex again. And I cried about it and I worried about it. And it was, sex was a part of it. But being sexual was really it. It was that I wanted to be held at some point. You know, maybe not right now, but I wanted to be held. I wanted to be stroked and loved. Even more than what my friends were able to give me. I wanted that sexual contact again. And I thought it was going to be gone forever. And about eight months after Ted died I met this guy and he was the brother of a friend of mine, actually.

And we started flirting. And he said, look, I know your HIV positive and it doesn't matter to me. And all we did that night was just make out but I can't tell you the difference it made for me because it suddenly opened up this new world. I thought, I can be sexual again. You know? And I am desirable and somebody would want to touch me. It's okay. My oldest son told me when I first told him about it. He said, mom, I love you no matter what. No matter what happens or no matter what you are or what you tell him. I love you no matter what. And that kind of gave me this strength and this energy and this force to say, yeah, this is okay. It seems like there's a public feeling that, well, if you got AIDS from drug use, you know, you're sort of here as a human being and if you got it from heterosexual sex well or a blood transfusion maybe, then it's not so bad or whatever. You know, and it's like, no, it doesn't.

And I don't even like it when people ask, well, how did you get it? It doesn't matter how you got it. Nobody deserves to have this virus. Period. You know, that's it. When you look at the picture, you can't narrow it down to one little faint. You're going to have to look at the whole piece. But the problem within the drugs in this country is our God in this country is money. And money is involved. And when you measure per person's life next to money in our country I won't say who will get the big vote. The deficit in the budget may mean the Ryan White bill is not much of a legacy at all. Congress has now allocated less than 20% of the amount it originally approved for this year. But AIDS, AIDS gets looked at a scans. Like it's someone else's disease. It's not our family, it's not our state, it's not our community.

The disease belongs to them. Well, it doesn't belong to them and we'll soon see it. 95,000 people have died from AIDS already in this country. In a far shorter time than it took to kill less than that in Vietnam. The number of AIDS cases in the US goes on climbing. And the media coverage? Look at the bottom line. But at times, the AIDS messages are conflicting. Cosmopolitan magazines, 10 million female readers heard. We are sure he knows about AIDS. A doctor tells you why you may not be at risk. The doctor was psychiatrist Robert Gould. He has claimed that ordinary heterosexual sex is safe. And I mean, tell you my position. That penis, vagina, intercourse is in all likelihood. South to a point where one doesn't have to worry and be concerned about contracting the disease. But members of the scientific community reacted to Gould's statement with alarm. He speaks to everybody.

And he says to women in general, don't worry. Go ahead and have a good time because you are not at risk. And this is a terrible responsibility. He may have lives on his conscience very soon. I'd like to thank the commission for having an opportunity to speak before you again. We need to not just think of HIV. Treating HIV, we have to treat the underlying issues. HIV is only one of the many symptoms

of what's going wrong with people's lives. I've written a nine-page statement about the issues. And I am getting emotional. And I don't know if you're even going to read it. I hope you do because it really explains some of the issues that poor people are faced with in this country. And I hope you're not only reading, but I hope you do something with it. I'm just so tired of saying the same thing over and over and over. Are you really listening? I think historically this country has never considered the emotions of real people, of poor people. They have never considered us as people. We don't need another Medicaid card. We don't need another welfare check. We need a national agenda. And we need this commission. We need you magic. We need all of the resources that we have to galvanize and make this happen.

I understand your fight. And I'm helping every way that I can. The door's been set. But we just got to kick it down. Oh! So long. My mind immediately goes back to the women that I deal with in my community. And I think of the devastation. Absolute devastation of what AIDS is doing to women, children, and families. Where do you leave your children? So it's a lot easier for a woman to say, I won't go to therapy. Who's going to take care of my little boy or my little girl or my children? I aid children? Who's going to stay with them? Family members are then responsible for taking care of children of parents who passed on. And children having to be parents and take care of their parents when they are sick. The system, the way that is set in place, is not set in place to help me or to help other women living with this virus.

You know, or families living with this virus. It's definitely like set up to fail. It is a woman's issue. It absolutely is. I love you.

I love you. I love you. How old are you? 35. And how old is this? 35. Okay, so you're changing roles now. You're the older sister. Don't worry too much. Okay. The medicine is what's supposed to take care of it. Now, which one is the 18th person? It's an associate. Your contact with her in communication with her is real important day-to-day. And was she always dominant?

Yes. Okay, just dominant. She is. And her hero, Rob, understands what she sees. She is in birth, roles, in birth order. She is probably the most significant thing. She will find herself. Okay. Where? That's. You know the old. Before we found out that the Genesis was HIV, I guess you can take it lightly. You don't really think about it. You don't think that it can happen to you. But when it hits home, you know, that made the difference. It hit home. Using the latest tape, it makes it very, very fast. Feel like breathing. It really makes you think. It really makes you change a lot of things in your life. I always took that role as an older sister.

I did not realize how much what I'm going through had torn them apart. It really hurt them. And they needed to be doing something. It hurt a little bit too. What's the bottom of them? The issue has not changed. It's still the same. Nobody wants to die long without friends. And I think families can handle it because they're being affected. They might not be infected, but they should. This is the love one. And whether they made it to themselves or not, that's part of their life.

That's all I'm going to say. It's about me too. It's about me. I can't say no more. I think that our family has gotten a closeness that was not there in that way before. We're able to talk about things. We talk about what would happen if something,

who would they go with if something was to happen to me. And we're able to talk about that sort of comfortably, as comfortable as you can talk about something like that. And they're able to accept my situation a little easier. Because it's talked about in the home. I had a lot of nurturing along the way. And that was really, really major for me. And I just, one of the things that I realized was that I wanted to be able to provide for other women the same thing that I had received. There was never a woman there telling me that, the HIV is an issue for you. And this is how you can help prevent it. This is what you can do for yourself. So in that sense, I guess I am kind of a role model. And that's a big responsibility.

But I also feel really privileged to have the chance to do that. I think that if I didn't find out about my HIV status as early as I did, if I hadn't had all the support that I had, I wouldn't be here today. And I feel really lucky that I'm here, that I'm able to talk about this, that I've dealt with this emotionally, so that I can be healthy and feel good about myself for a while. I've done a lot of crazy things in my life. And this is probably the only one that I sort of wish I could take back. I mean, they've all contributed to who I am, and to a really full fabulous life. But, you know, it's like, well, I couldn't have learned so many of these lessons I've learned without having to go through this. I'd love to take what I have now and live to be like an old lady. I know women can make a difference.

And you know what's going to happen? We're going to see women being able to be supported on the arms of each other. And if we hook, if we hook up, it's not going to be a problem. Because you hold up. And when you hold her up, you hold her children up. When you hold up, you hold her man up. You hold her household up. You hold her community, because women can do it. Yes. That's it. Let's pull it together.

We can do this, we can be the bigger we are, we can do this, we can be the bigger we are, we can be the bigger we are. We can do this, we can be the bigger we are, we can be the bigger we are.

We can do this, we can be the bigger we are, we can be the bigger we are, we can be the bigger we are. We can do this, we can be the bigger we are. We can do this, we can be the bigger we are. We can do this, we can do this.

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DuPont. Better things for better living. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. And the annual financial support of viewers like you. Charlie Rose is also made possible by these funders. Welcome to our broadcast. Tonight we'll take a look at the continuing drama of CBS and QVC. We'll meet U.S. Senate candidate Michael Huffington and his wife, Ariana Huffington.

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